Turn Around, Bright Eyes
by maxbyfive
Summary: After the events of Blah Blah, Woof Woof, Max tries to figure out how she's feeling. S1, ML
1. Every Now And Then I Fall Apart

A/N: This story takes place at some point after Blah Blah, Woof Woof. It's told from Max's point of view. It was inspired by role-playing and will be continued, but I'm not sure for how long (I usually write one-shots). Feedback love.

Disclaimer: I don't own Dark Angel and I am making no profit from writing this story.

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Two weeks. It had been exactly two weeks since the kiss, after the car, before the hospital, and I still couldn't get over it all.

The dream. That stupid dream kept playing itself over and over again my mind. It played in my mind while I slept, I thought about it as I was making deliveries, when I was hanging with my friends (two in particular that kept calling me on my spaciness and telling me to "just talk to him already").

The fact that I had gone back into a city where I was wanted for murder, just to see if Logan was okay, and then giving him my blood...It wasn't even giving him the blood. I would have done that for any of my friends if they needed it. It was the fact that I'd gone back, nearly thrown away what I'd worked years to get, that scared me. Would I have done that for anyone else?

I'd like to say that I would. I'd like to think that I'm that good of a person. The truth is, I don't know, and I probably never will. Because it wasn't Original Cindy, Kendra, Sketchy, or anyone else who was in danger of dying that day. It was Logan. The one person who really knew who I was. The soldier that I was made to be and the girl that I am.

It's touching to know that someone will care about you enough not to care about who you were in the past. True, he doesn't know i everything /i . I don't know everything about him either. But what I do know about him - the fact that he's an incredible cook and always willing to make me dinner, that he works day and night to help people and try to make the world a little better, that he stays with me when my seizures are bad, that he's always finding time to help me look for my other siblings, even though there are plenty of other, more important things he could be doing.

I told him when I visited him in the hospital, the only time I visited him in the hospital, that I'd kissed him because I was really emotional. And it was true. I was. The thing was, the emotions hadn't gone away.

I realized that day that I care about him, too. More than I realized, more than I ever thought I could care about someone. I've never felt so...strongly about someone else before.

It scares the hell out of me.

I'd been avoiding him since that day. I didn't want to deal with it. I didn't know how to. Manticore taught me a lot of things - self-preservation, how to fight, how to push myself to the limit, but they never taught me how to deal with my feelings. We weren't supposed to have them.

I knew I couldn't keep avoiding him. My friends kept telling me that and I knew it in the back of my mind. But I wasn't the only one who needed to stop avoiding the situation - my pager had been unusually silent lately.

Sighing, I grabbed my jacket and left a note for Kendra telling her where I'd be. We had to figure out where we stood. Together.


	2. Tonight I'll Break The Surface

A/N: Thanks so much for the reviews I've gotten so far, I hope you guys enjoy this chapter. I'm not entirely sure where it's going from here, but I definitely want to continue it.

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I get to the Fogle Towers some time after midnight, wondering if he's asleep by now - I sometimes forget that not everyone is a nocturnal creature like I am. I see the penthouse lights are on and breathe a quick sigh of relief, then park my baby next to his Aztec and start to head upstairs.

About halfway up to his apartment, I start to get nervous. Maybe the reason he hasn't been paging is because he doesn't want to see me, because if he sees me he'll have to remember what happened and maybe he didn't think it was appropriate and doesn't want to think about me thinking about him in that way, because he's afraid or just doesn't want me to want him like that because I'm not normal in any sense of the word and he knows it and doesn't want to deal with someone - something - like me. A chimera, a lemon. A freak.

Okay. Take a deep breath, Max, calm down. You're working yourself up over what's probably nothing. Maybe he's just been working on other things, you know how he is, always looking out for the downtrodden. Maybe he's just busy. he does have other important things in his life, you know.

I pause for a second, thinking about how I've just refereed to myself as an important part of Logan's life, and wonder when my ego got that big.

The elevator dings and before I know it I'm standing outside the door of his apartment and feeling nervous and flustered all over again. I'm standing outside his door and wondering if maybe I shouldn't have come and maybe this can wait until tomorrow, but a voice in my head tells me that that's stupid, I've driven all this way and the least I can do is talk to him.

Taking a deep breath, I knock at the door. I usually don't knock, not when I'm visiting Logan, but it seems like the right thing to do in this case.

He answers after a few moments and when he sees it's me, a look of surprise crosses his face. I wonder why that it is, it could be for a lot of reasons - that it's me and I generally don't knock when I come over or that it's me and I've barely said two words to him and haven't seen him since the whole...incident.

"Max."

"Logan."

I idle in the doorway for a little while, partly because I haven't planned what I'm gonna say to him about this and I'm dreading the idea of talking about it, and partly because he's blocking my way in. "Mind if we talk?"

"Sure." He wheels himself out of my way and starts to lead the way into his living room, waving his hand to the couch as a way of inviting me to sit down, and when I do, he moves so that he's sitting across from me. Where he's sitting - barely a foot and a half away from me - feels a little close for comfort right now, considering what we're about to discus, but I don't move away.

I take a deep breath before I start talking. "Look, I know we sort of talked about this, but...I felt like I should apologize."

His blue-green eyes blink in confusion behind his glasses, then widen when he gets what I'm referring to. "You don't have to. It's nothing to be sorry for."

"I know. But it feels like it is. I mean, everything was so insane, and it feels like I just made things more complicated by doing what I did. And things have just felt...I don't know. Awkward, since then."

And if the past couple of weeks have been awkward? That's nothing compared to how awkward this feels. I never thought I'd be speechless when talking to someone, especially not him. I'm looking at my hands, the wheels of his chair, the wall, the floor, anywhere but into his eyes, but I force myself to look at him. It's bad enough that I've barged into his home in the middle of the night to force him to talk about a kiss that may have been unwelcome, I don't wanna be rude and not look at him when I'm talking to him.

He nods in an understanding way and looks like he wants to reach out and touch my hand or shoulder, but doesn't. "I just thought you'd need some space. But it's okay, Max. Really."

I feel my shoulders relax the tiniest bit - I hadn't even realized I was so tense. I breathe deeply again and nod.

"Okay. Good."

I breathe again, feeling jittery and like I need to keep taking breaths to stay calm. It doesn't work, but it helps a little.

"So, we're back to normal, then? Or as normal as we can get?" I manage to crack a smile.

Maybe normal's not what you want.

Shut up, Max. You don't want that, you can't want that. Look at where one kiss got you. Do you really want to lose the one person you can be totally honest and comfortable with just because you let your emotions get in the way?

He smiles too, but his smile is small and weak and I can see his unhappiness leak through. "Yeah."

I frown, wondering why his smile is false. Wasn't this what he wanted? "What?"

He looks at me for a second, as if he wants to say something, but he stops and looks down. "Nothing. We're back to normal."

"Is that what we want?"

Holy shit.

I can't believe what I've just blurted out. I know I have a big mouth, but damn, I think I've reached a new level of foot-in-mouthiness. Even though I'm mortified at what I've just said, I force myself to look at him, determined to figure out what's bothering him.

He looks back at me, a little surprised. Then he looks solemn, and a little challenging. "I don't know. Is it?"

"I don't know. But I know what I don't want. I don't want this. I don't want this awkwardness between us. You're one of the only people in my life who knows what I am and I don't want to lose whatever it is we have."

The expression on his face is unreadable. "I don't want to lose it either. You're...you're a good friend of mine. I want you around."

Without realizing it, I've moved myself closer to him. My knees are less than an inch away from his and I know he can't feel it, but they're almost touching.

"What do we want then?" I say, my voice just slightly above a whisper. "What do you want?"

He's quiet for a moment and I'm thinking that I've blown it, that I've lost him for good and not just as a potential significant other but as a friend, all because I couldn't keep my mouth shut and leave well enough alone, until he speaks.

"You."

I can barely breathe and think that I can't have heard that correctly. I can't be that lucky. I never have been before.

"What?"

"You. I want you."

I hesitate a split second before I lean towards him and kiss him on the lips. His response is slow at first, almost as if he's afraid. Well, I'm afraid too, but I'm not letting that stop me.

This kiss is long, gentle but passionate, slow but intense. It's almost like the kiss we shared outside the cabin but better because we don't have to rush things.

When we stop, we pull back just enough so we both have breathing room and look into each others eyes, as if we can't believe what just happened. He reaches out and touches my cheek gently, his thumb brushing away a tear I didn't even know had escaped from my eyes.

I smile and laugh softly. "So now what do we do?"

He smiles back, shaking his head gently. "No idea."

I smile again, wider this time.

"We can start with more of this."

And I cup his face in my hands and we kiss again.


End file.
